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There is a large amount of Bitcoin estimated to have been lost over time, but not much has been said about the amount of Ethereum lost as well. This might come down to the fact that Bitcoin has a much lower limited supply compared to Ethereum. Hence, the possibility of so many lost coins does not have much of an impact on its value compared to that of Ethereum, with a much higher supply. Nevertheless, as it is in crypto, there is also a notable number of ETH expected to be lost forever, as outlined by a researcher.
In an X report, crypto researcher Conor Grogan revealed that a significant amount of ETH has actually been lost over time. In its 10 years of operation, there have been mishaps and user errors that have led to notable amounts of ETH being locked/inaccessible forever.
The first part of the report focused on instances of user errors that have led to hundreds of thousands of coins being completely lost forever. The researcher pointed to at least 913,111 ETH, worth over $3.43 billion, representing more than 0.76% of the total supply being lost already.
One of these instances is the Web3 Foundation’s Parity Multisig bug that led to 306,000 ETH being locked forever. Then, a faulty contract saw 60,000 ETH from Quadriga being trapped, as well as the Akutars’ NFT mint that saw 11,500 ETH trapped after the mint went awry. Additionally, there is over 25,000 ETH sitting in a burn address that has been sent by users.
The research also includes the infamous Rain Lõhmus wallet, which holds 250,000 ETH in it. The lore around this is that Lõhmus had spent $75,000 to purchase the coins back when Ethereum launched. However, the entrepreneur and LHV Bank founder had lost his keys and has been unable to access the wallet, which now sits at almost a staggering $1 billion.
Moving beyond just user error alone, then the number of ETH that have gone out of circulation shoots up much higher. When Grogan added in the total ETH burned after the implementation of EIP-1554 back in 2021, the figure rose to over 5.3 million ETH. This translates to a dollar value of around $23.5 billion, accounting for more than 5% of the total Ethereum supply.
However, the crypto researcher explains that this still does not include instances of where users have lost their private keys or forgotten Genesis wallets. Taking this into account, the amount of lost ETH is probably much higher, making it hard to pinpoint.
In contrast to Ethereum’s figures, it is estimated that around 20% of the Bitcoin supply is lost forever. Since the Bitcoin supply is capped at 21 million coins, then any lost supply means there is less available supply for investors in the market. This makes lost BTC even more impactful than lost ETH, given that the Ethereum supply is not capped and continues to climb.
